The Mind Creative
one's warm breath beating her cheek like the fanning of a bird's
wing.
But at the end of two weeks Mamzelle Aurélie had grown quite
used to these things, and she no longer complained.
It was also at the end of two weeks that Mamzelle Aurélie, one
evening, looking away toward the crib where the cattle were being
fed, saw Valsin's blue cart turning the bend of the road. Odile sat
beside the mulatto, upright and alert. As they drew near, the young
woman's beaming face indicated that her homecoming was a
happy one.
But this coming, unannounced
and unexpected, threw Mamzelle
Aurélie into a flutter that was
almost agitation. The children
had to be gathered. Where was
Ti Nomme? Yonder in the shed,
putting an edge on his knife at
the grindstone. And Marcéline
and Marcélette? Cutting and
fashioning doll-rags in the corner
of the gallery. As for Élodie, she
was safe enough in Mamzelle
Aurélie's arms; and she had
screamed with delight at sight of
the familiar blue cart which was
bringing her mother back to her.
The excitement was all over, and they were gone. How still it was
when they were gone! Mamzelle Aurélie stood upon the gallery,
looking and listening. She could no longer see the cart; the red
sunset and the blue-gray twilight had together flung a purple mist
across the fields and road that hid it from her view. She could no
longer hear the wheezing and creaking of its wheels. But she could
still faintly hear the shrill, glad voices of the children.
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